So I haven't been keeping up with my anti virus and it's about time I have to buy a new one. I've been running AVG for quite sometime, but recently read articles about how the free edition of AVG is not good for your system because it deletes files with out even letting you know, especially some files that allow certain programs to run.

I also heard that Norton is not the way to go either since it's probably one of the buggiest software and slowest (slows down your computer tremendously).

My question is what's a good anti-virus program that protects good, but at the same time is lite on the cpu usage that it won't cause my system to freeze or such. I know there's alot of stuff out there now, so it's kind of hard to tell what's good quality these days.

I'm using AVG Free Edition, so far so good, just the scanning process take time and eat much computer resources when the scanning process start. But I don't think this is a big problem, because you can set the scanning schedule time to when you are not using your computer (normally when night), of course this will not work if you are using your computer for 24 hours. For Norton, few days ago, I have try the Norton 360 BETA, but I just uninstall it today, It consume too much resource than other antivirus software, I give up.

I personally do not pay for antivirus and believe that being up to date on patches and browsing the internet safely will thwart 99% of malware. If you will feel "more secure" paying for antivirus software and need something that is well known around the industry, I would suggest NOD32. It is a very fast, lean, and reliable scanner.

A good free scanner on the other hand is one from Avast. You can search throughout this forum on arguments for and against antivirus in general (and the level of protection / false security it could give users).

Ivan, Norton 360 is far more than just a virus scanner - so naturally it's gonna need a larger share of the CPU to do its stuff. Don't forget that during beta stage, it wasn't even supposed to run smoothly on all systems.

Just as an interesting side note, I just read an article (I think on MSN) that had a blurb about VirusTotal. Out of over 9000 submissions, all 28 scanners were only successful in picking out 30 bits of malware at the same time. All others were missed by one or more of the scanners.

I agree 100% with PhiBer that safe browsing and keeping up to date will go miles (or clockcycles?) towards keeping your machine safe and sound. As for best free antivirus, I have always used and recommended AVG Free from Grisoft. Try them out and pick one you like

PhiBer wrote:

I personally do not pay for antivirus and believe that being up to date on patches and browsing the internet safely will thwart 99% of malware. If you will feel "more secure" paying for antivirus software and need something that is well known around the industry, I would suggest NOD32. It is a very fast, lean, and reliable scanner.

see ive tried something like about 16 different antiviruses and Id highly recommend Mcafee corporate edition from www.mcafee.com for anti virus and unlike other anti viruses it does not do only the regular stuff, it also blocks worms, trojans and scripts BEFORE they execute. Not only that, it is the only anti virus i've used that can detect script viruses that affect files like desktop.htt and folder.ini and integrates perfectly into the browser monitoring the PC, IM's, Emails, CHATS, IRC and what not!!

Avast is quite good, but has below average proactive security. In other words, Avast doesn't provide timely protection against zero-day malware -- malware which is so new that Avast's staff has not yet developed signatures to protect against it.

Proactive protection ensues from the strength of an AV's heuristics PLUS its speed in issuing signatures to cover new malware threats. Avast lacks strength in both categories (heuristics & speed).

Proactive effectiveness of various AVs has been measured recently by two different testing organizations, as listed below...

B) AV-Comparatives
2- At the above linked page, click "Comparatives" in left column. This gets you a new page.
3- On the new page, at line "14. Retrospective/ProActive Test May 2007" click "Online results" (or click "Report" if you want to download a pdf copy of the full report.)

Last edited by bellgamin on Fri Jun 22, 2007 8:16 pm; edited 1 time in total

I've used Antivir Classic as well but the pop-up screen with ads for other things became too annoying.

Antivir (aka "Avira") provides above-average Proactive protection. However, if Antivir's aggressive heuristics are set at "High" level, they can sometimes produce a lot of false-positives. This can be compensated by adjusting Antivir's heuristics to "Medium" or "Low" - as preferred.

To eliminate Antivir's notifier (avnotify.exe) AND get additional proactive protection, I recommend using "System Safety Monitor (SSM)" -- a superb HIPS (Host-based Intrusion Prevention System). You can get the free SSM version 2.0.8.583 at THIS link. Then simply add avnotify.exe to SSM's blocked list & that will be the end of your seeing Antivir's notifier.

Anyone try to use F-PROT (F-protect) it is a very light anti-virus for networks that use lots of your processes this runs practically silent and will cut anything off from circulation before infection i.e. my MDaemon server has F-Prot and a few users have received a postcard that had a Trojan attached to it. All those users were blocked from receiving email and sending email until the server was scanned and the virus attached was quarantined then with no problems the users were allowed access to their email. Try it is not expensive and one purchase gives you 5 licenses